The Technique I Sealed Away
Stay calm.
When it came to the fight itself, he could take a hundred hits if he had to. That much was true. Whatever finishing move he'd thrown hadn't landed either, so eating a few more punches wouldn't change a thing. Of course, there was always the chance that the coins he'd poured into Stamina and Mental Strength would crash while he stood there getting pummeled.
The real problem was that he couldn't think of a single way to end this.
Hitting him doesn't do a damn thing. But I still have to finish this fight somehow...
He had no idea how far his Strength had fallen, but if a punch he'd thrown with everything he had landed like a cotton fist, his Strength stat was clearly in the gutter. There was no way an attack like that could take down Cheon Woohyeok, an S-rank Hunter.
When it came to the fight itself, he could take a hundred hits if he had to. That much was true.
Huh?
The thought snapped him wide awake. He didn't need to think any further. This cycle was going to keep repeating itself.
He'd been through something like this before. Back then, it had been the opposite — Strength and Agility had skyrocketed while Stamina and Mental Strength had crashed. His life had been in danger, but ending the fight had been far easier than it was now.
This time, dying wasn't a concern.
He just couldn't knock the other guy down!
While Jisu sank into this deep, circling dilemma, Woohyeok — who'd just been hit by that cotton-fist punch — was starting to piece the situation together in his own way.
What the hell was that attack just now?
The Jisu standing in front of him had gone completely rigid, locked in a pose so bizarre it defied description. It looked like he was about to unleash something. That first strike, delivered right after he'd shrugged off a high-voltage current like it was nothing. The physical impact had been next to zero.
But the Strength Woohyeok knew Jisu possessed was nothing like this.
This bastard blew up a wyvern. If he's going this far on purpose... Fuck. What is he thinking?
Woohyeok got to his feet and reset his stance. An emotion he couldn't quite name was crashing through him in relentless waves. He didn't know what it was. Or rather — he kept turning away from it. Kept refusing to look.
"What the hell are you plotting, you son of a bitch?!"
"...!"
Jisu didn't answer. He just stared at Woohyeok with an intensity that could cut steel. Whether Jisu had intended it or not, that silent standoff — nothing more than a locked gaze — was pumping an enormous tension into every person gathered here.
What is that guy even trying to do?
Huiyeon had crossed blades with all kinds of Hunters back when she'd still been active. That had been the lawless years, when no one fully understood what Hunter abilities even were, and the conflicts of interest between them had been viciously sharp. She'd seen every way a person could fight — and even she couldn't make sense of what Jisu was doing right now.
That man...!
And she wasn't the only one. Chaerin understood even less — her confusion ran along an entirely different track from everyone else's shock. Something that ought to have been there, something she should have felt from him without even trying, simply wasn't.
What is this? How is that man even fighting?
Just what was he plotting? They almost wished he had a scheme.
Jisu's reality, unfortunately, was nowhere near as impressive as their expectations.
Scheme, my ass. I'm standing here trying to figure out how to end this damn match.
He almost wished this pose actually meant something. Say, that after throwing a punch like that he could trigger some kind of detonator and blow the guy up. It was a ridiculous thought. But even that would have been better than standing here with his stats in the toilet, unable to do a thing.
Wait a second.
In that instant, Jisu's mind kicked into overdrive.
Right. I just need to bluff.
Right now, none of these people knew his stats had crashed. That was why they were being so cautious. They also had no idea why his defense was so high. And even if they figured out his stats could drop, they'd have no clue what was causing it.
He could work with that.
Only then did Jisu drop the pose. He drew a long, deep breath. He could do this. He wasn't exactly a gifted actor, but this was the only way he was getting out of this fight.
"Cheon Woohyeok."
Jisu opened his mouth with careful deliberation. Every eye in the place snapped toward him. Naturally.
"I'll give you a chance. Surrender."
"...What?"
Woohyeok couldn't believe his ears. Surrender? To him? Of all people?
But Jisu's demeanor was unyielding.
"I have no desire to take a life. If this continues, you will die. I'm offering you a choice, even now. Surrender. If you do, I won't activate that — the thing I've already planted on you."
Jisu paused there and took another breath. Then, staring down at his own trembling hands—
He actually went and said it.
Jisu... a technique like a demon?
Seyeon, Jisu's operator, was watching the duel from a location Seongwolhoe had prepared for her. Which was to say, she was watching her contractor fight from the heart of enemy territory.
At first she'd thought there might be something she could do to help, but there hadn't been much room to intervene. All they'd managed was to keep Jisu from eating too many hits, while Woohyeok on the other side had been losing his mind over something of his apparently being blocked. And now her contractor Jisu had, without warning, come down with a full-blown case of eighth-grader syndrome.
It's a little cringey, but maybe he actually prepared something? I wonder if there's anything I can do to help.
Setting aside the fact that Jisu's words and conduct were, by any modern standard, deeply unfortunate — she was, to her credit, still earnestly looking for a way to assist him. A truly admirable thought, really. And it was right around then that someone slipped up beside her.
"Oho. So that child is the strongest Hunter on this earth?"
"...?"
A voice she'd never heard before. An elderly woman's. Seyeon turned, and found an old woman in a tailored black suit standing there. Her white hair was styled with a flair that belonged on a magazine cover, and her body was far too solid, far too powerful, to belong to someone her age. The only trace the years had left on her was the fine creases around her mouth.
Just standing beside her was like standing next to an ancient tree — a presence so vast it seemed to take up the entire room. The old woman tipped her gaze away from the screen, toward Seyeon, and smiled.
"Forgive me, dear. I didn't mean to ignore you."
"Ah — no, not at all."
The answer left Seyeon's mouth before she could think. There was a resonance in the woman's voice. All the usual prejudices that came with the word elderly — frailty, decline, someone to be protected — none of them applied. The pressure coming off her was overwhelming.
"So I take it I need to go upstairs if I want to watch this duel?"
"Yes. The fifty-fifth floor should do it."
"Thank you, child. Take care of yourself. I'll be going, then."
With that, the old woman turned on her heel and walked away, her footsteps receding from Seyeon's field of view.
To exist that firmly, that unshakably, at that age... what an extraordinary person.
The thought had only just settled when another followed on its heels.
Come to think of it... I feel like I've seen her somewhere before.
"What the fuck are you talking about?! You bastard — are you trying to insult me?!"
Woohyeok launched himself at Jisu and started swinging all over again.
Thud!
Crack!
But not a single blow did a thing. He considered gathering his current again, then dismissed it — if it hadn't worked the first time, there was no point. It felt like pounding on a rampart that would never fall. An overwhelmingly stifling feeling began to tighten, little by little, around Woohyeok's throat.
"Damn it!"
Jisu simply took every attack that came his way. In truth, dodging wasn't even an option. His Agility was rock bottom — he couldn't even track how Woohyeok was moving. If his Stamina had been this low, he would have been the one to lose.
But it wasn't. So Jisu kept the bluff going.
"I already told you. Please stop. I don't want to kill you. For your own sake, wouldn't it be wiser to take the chance while I'm still offering it?"
"Bullshit! Where does a two-bit Hunter like you get off talking to ME like—"
I need to come on harder.
The most important part of a bluff — making even yourself believe you've already won.
"Hey."
"......?!"
Woohyeok was badly thrown. Of course he was. A man who'd been nothing but formal honorifics had just dropped to casual speech without warning. How was he supposed to not be shocked?
Frankly, Jisu wasn't used to it either. He'd wanted to wrap this up nicely if he could, but the other guy was a thug. If he didn't come on this strong, there was no end in sight — and who knew what the coin prices would do in the meantime. So he was pushing a little harder. That was all.
"Did you just call me two-bit?"
Jisu asked it as if he genuinely didn't understand. If they were being precise, wasn't an S-rank like Woohyeok more two-bit than an SS-rank like himself?
Whether Woohyeok caught that undercurrent or not, it landed as one more layer of threat.
"Kh!"
Woohyeok had nothing to say. The man was right. It had been a force of habit — but the man standing in front of him was a higher-ranked Hunter, wasn't he?
A life spent clawing up from the gutter, through every hardship, to this position. And in all that life, a humiliation he had never once tasted.
The certainty that he could not break through, colliding with those incomprehensible words the bastard had just spat out.
A sealed technique? What kind of asinine crap is that?!
It was eighth-grader nonsense Woohyeok couldn't parse. But eighth-grader syndrome looked surprisingly convincing on someone that powerful. And the man in front of him was someone high-voltage electricity couldn't touch — someone who could smash a wyvern with one hand.
He had transcended the standard of human strength.
Only then did every cell in Woohyeok's body begin to drag that long-denied emotion out into the open.
What... what is this?
He was trembling and couldn't stop.
He doesn't want to kill me? Meaning he can kill me, right here?
Why... why is my body shaking?
It was time to admit it. The emotion Woohyeok had spent his whole life keeping at arm's length — the one every human being carries.
Fear.
Fear of the unknown.
I'm going to die. If I keep holding out here, I might actually die, just like he said.
Death.
For the first time in his life, Cheon Woohyeok was swallowed by the terror of knowing he could die.
"Fuck... you son of a bitch!"
"Son of a bitch?"
"Hiiiiek!!!"
In truth, Jisu was just parroting Woohyeok's own words back at him. But it landed as something terrifying, and Woohyeok couldn't stop his trembling legs from carrying him a step backward. He reset his stance, but he couldn't stop the shaking. He didn't attack again.
Was the right thing to do to fight through this trembling and keep going? Even so — surrender was out of the question. Surrender! Had that word ever existed in Cheon Woohyeok's life?
He'd lived like a delinquent, but he was still an S-rank Hunter. Holding out, somehow, was its own kind of pride.
And the Jisu standing in front of him....
"Hey. Say that again. Son of a bitch?"
The strongest Hunter on earth was staring him down. Woohyeok looked away in spite of himself, his voice shaking.
"Th-th-that's...!"
This bastard, I swear — just surrender already.
And so the stalemate held. Neither of them would yield an inch.
It was in that moment — in a situation balanced on a knife's edge — that a woman's voice slipped through the cracks of the tension-choked air.